Grounding in Autumn

October 30, 2018

When autumn begins, and the rain and wind start moving the world around, I often feel like I’m being blown around, too. Grounding myself is the most helpful and healing action I’ve found that keeps me, here, breathing, here. With every pose, the one constant is that some part of me needs to touch the ground.

That’s where to begin, with the ground. When you don’t know what to do, when you are tired or scared or ashamed or overcome, if you cannot remember the last time you took a breath and remembered it, touch the earth. Go outside and touch the grass or the trees or the sidewalk, stay inside and stand in your room, sit in a chair and press your toes into the floor. Be with the earth.

Because in the swirl of everything, here’s what matters: your breath, your beating heart, and what you feel.

Any movement you take while you’re touching the ground is up to you. If it feels good to stand and breathe, do that. If it feels good to do a lunge or a warrior or lie on your back, curled up into a roly poly bug, do that. You are in charge of you. And you are definitely in charge of what your body does. Sometimes, when the wind blows, I like to stand in it and face it. Then I ask, what do I need to know? The wind doesn’t always respond. It might respond the next day, and I am not connected enough to realize that it is the wind talking instead of my thoughts. But, every once in a while, it answers, and I know it answers. And to fully understand what the wind is saying, I have to be really here, listening and breathing here. Grounded.

The last time the wind spoke to me, it said, feel everything. And for many moments, I did.

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Meet Our Writers

Our Writers

Julie Bertagna

Julie Bertagna is a 500 RYT and certified Baptiste yoga teacher who teaches Baptiste power yoga and recovery yoga at Namaspa Yoga & Massage, as well as in her home studio, The Yoga Loft, in Bend. She is a mother and a grandmother, she loves the outdoors, and she still pursues dental hygiene one day a week! In the summer, she spends time at her partner's retreat venue, Vernonia Springs, which puts on retreats and special events. More information about Julie’s offerings can be found on her website: juliebertagnayoga.com

Liz Skarvelis

Yoga is everything to Liz. It's her physical and spiritual practice, her political action, and her love song to both herself and the world. She started practicing yoga in college and grew her roots when she moved to San Francisco in 2008. She practiced Bhakti Yoga (yoga of love and devotion) at Yoga Tree Castro with Janet Stone, who she considers her first and primary teacher. Yoga brings her freedom of mind, stillness of spirit, and strength of being that she strives to share with others. Her classes are soft and strong and everything in between; she includes meditation, breath work, and space to connect you to your truest self. You can also expect a few helpings of (occasionally funny) humor. For more information, go to her website: www.lovebirdyoga.com

Fae Leslie Hoffman

Fae is a butterfly leaf girl. She teaches yoga, cartwheels in the rain, reads ferociously, and is learning how to listen to stillness. Fae has been published in The Southampton Review, elephant journal, Mukha Yoga, and writes best barefoot. She completed her 200-hour teacher training with Leslie Pearlman and is trained in Vinyasa with a fierce Forrest influence. She is also certified in Thai massage and has taught in New York, Thailand, Oregon, Wisconsin, and deep in the backwoods of California. Yoga makes her brave.

Zia Estrella

An exotic stargazer from the land of the intuitive ones, Zia embodies physicality, possibility, and empowerment in lighthearted playfulness. She loves the truth with allherheart and lives it with allherbeing. She grounds down intoherdeep dark Taína roots to rise. Humbled to practice and study yoga since 2007, she lives in wholeness, giving full credit to each and every emotion she experienceswhileembracing the power of the now moment. Shiftingherperspective to realize the eternal inner light within isher Dharma. She got turned upsidedown on the True North path of yoga and she rememberedherPrem - TruthLoveBeauty. This isherdeepest source of empowerment, creativity, joy and peace. May she transform darkness into light throughherown journey and serve all beings everywhere in truth, love and beauty. Learn more at www.ziayoga.io

Heidi Drake

Heidi Drake discovered yoga at the suggestion of her chiropractor and foundedDownward Dog Yoga & Wellness Studioin Sunriver, Oregon in 2017, after obtaining her RYT-250 aerial yoga instructor certification from Aerial Yoga Academy. A lifelong dancer who taught jazz, hip hop, and tap at Sunriver Dance Academy for 9 years, Heidi realized that she needed something a bit gentler on her 50+ year-old body and was pleasantly shocked to find a passion for the strength, flexibility, and mind-body-soul connection yoga offers. When she’s not at the studio or writing, Heidi’s favorite place is on the Little Deschutes river, in her own backyard, with her husband, two teenage daughters, and pack of 4 dogs.

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Adho Mukha

Adho Mukha in Sanskrit means "Facing", Our name Mukha Yoga came about because in our life's we are all on a journey of some kind and as we stand to look and face them we are reminded through yoga to breathe and flow